


Partners and Other Shift Mates

by bluelinerush27



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27983628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelinerush27/pseuds/bluelinerush27
Summary: The truth is cold and hard to swallow.In the aftermath of Beau Felton's murder, Kay takes a moment. Meldrick offers a listening ear.
Kudos: 3





	Partners and Other Shift Mates

**Author's Note:**

> Or: the part where I find my old writing and decide to do something about it.

He finds her sitting in the aquarium.

It’s not the best place to be sitting, given that everyone can see inside. It’s usually where they stick people to wait, no matter who it’s for. Someone they know, arrested for God knows what; a detective who might know something. But he knows why she’s there, why everyone’s been steering clear.

What he doesn’t get is why she’s chosen this place to get away from it all. At the least, to remove herself from the ongoing chaos that never really goes away.

So he closes the door behind him going in and leans against it, waiting.

Kay looks up and sighs. “Drew the short straw, huh?”

It sounds like she doesn’t care, but Meldrick knows better. They’ve all got that shell around them, the one that rises when it gets to be too much. Some of them are better at it than they should be, which is a little ironic, given in the long run, it doesn’t actually change a thing.

“No straws to draw,” Meldrick replies. “How long you been in here?”

Kay shakes her head. “You and everybody else in that squad room been watching,” she says. “You know how long I’ve been in here.”

It’s true, he does. He sits in a chair at the far end of the row. It remains, he thinks, that none of them want to deal with the reason why Kay’s in here and why she’s been sitting for so long. There are papers spread out everywhere. He’d seen Megan earlier on and will likely see her again. But for the most part, what happens next is on Kay’s shoulders and the whole shift knows that, too.

Twelve hours, he thinks. Twelve hours since they’d got the news that Beau’s death was a murder rather than the suicide it’d looked like, and it’s almost like they’re all just waiting to see what Kay will do. It doesn’t sit well with him. There’s something about it that sticks hard; the thought of one of their own dead and gone and nobody yet to answer for it, though they will.

“You know, you could’ve gone in the box,” Meldrick says finally. “Done all this in there. Nobody would’ve bothered you.”

“Until somebody needed it,” says Kay. “I tell you, Meldrick, every time we close any wound in this city, all’s we do is open up a brand new one.”

Meldrick nods. They’re both used to it by now, years spent chasing names on a board, red and blue to black. It doesn’t matter how many murders they solve, there’ll always be another name somewhere.

“You sure you wanna do this on your own?” he asks.

He knows what she’s doing. Gets the feeling that she doesn’t really want to do it, and who would, really, Meldrick wonders. But they all know that Beth won’t, that Megan is too much in shock over what’s happened and once again, it falls to probably the only person who wouldn’t let Beau down.

“He was my partner, Meldrick,” Kay tells him, quiet. “My partner. And all this time, I thought the worst, that he was just slacking off, falling into a bottle every chance he got to make it go away. But it never does.”

“No,” says Meldrick.

He knows all too well what she means. They’d all noticed it. And yet, none of them had bothered to do anything except carry on like they usually did, that strange brand of gallows humor born of too much time in the trenches, so to speak; the bleeding streets where all they’ve got is what they came with and most days even that doesn’t feel like enough.

It’ll hit them hard in the days to come, he knows. When the dust settles and they’ve got nothing left but to face the things they’ve said and done, for better or worse.

“We all knew he wasn’t dirty,” Meldrick says after a while. “Forget about Falsone, the hell does he know anyway?”

Kay snorts and doesn’t answer. The opinion of an outsider has no bearing and in the moment, the only thing that does is knowing they’ve lost one of their own, again. Meldrick is sharply reminded of being in this same place himself, once upon a time. Of how it’d felt to look back and realize how much he’d missed in his own partner; how much it’d hurt to know that life could have gone so wrong that an end became the only way out.

It’d hurt like hell then, the same way it does now.

“I talked about this with him once, after Beth left,” Kay remarks, without looking him in the eye. “He wanted to know if I’d take care of things, if anything happened and I promised I would.”

“I told Steve the same thing, back in the day,” Meldrick replies. “Lot of good that did. I couldn’t even see something was wrong.”

“That’s what gets me,” says Kay. “Half the time, you don’t even know something’s wrong. And when you do, you got no idea what to do about it.”

“You wonder what would’ve happened if he hadn’t quit,” says Meldrick. It’s not a question. Kay blows out a breath that probably doesn’t steady her as much as she probably thinks it does.

“I should’ve seen it,” she says. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t have gone silent like that. I’ve been pissed off at him so many times over all these years and it never mattered. Five minutes later, he’s asking me for a pen or a stick of gum, you know?”

She trails off and gestures helplessly to everything around her. The case files from before Beau had been suspended: open ones still yet to be reassigned, the closed ones not yet fully processed. The funeral plans, which they both know she’s avoiding and will eventually have to face for real.

“And now look at this,” she continues. “Some bastard went and shot him and now we’ve got all this, and you know, Meldrick, I don’t…”

Meldrick says nothing. Again, he finds himself wondering why the aquarium had been her choice of refuge, when she knows everyone can see them. She looks down at everything, blinking, and he pretends not to notice, because she’s spent so damn long trying to prove herself as one of them without ever knowing she doesn’t have to. For him to acknowledge the fact she’s close to tears feels almost insulting. There’s a long, awkward silence in which he can hear it, but he remains silent, waiting.

“Guess I know how you felt now, huh?” she asks finally.

“Ain’t ever gonna be easy,” says Meldrick. “You lose a partner, nothing feels right afterward. You look across the desk and you think you’re still gonna see them sitting there.” He shakes his head. “And when they’re not, it feels like the world’s gone off.”

“I never thought I’d have to do this,” says Kay. “All this time, we’ve been so damn lucky and the minute I’m not watching…”

“Don’t do that,” Meldrick tells her. “This ain’t your fault. “None of us could’ve seen this coming, Kay, not even you.”

“I wish I had. Maybe I could’ve talked him out of it. I mean come on, Meldrick, Internal Affairs? That’s just asking for trouble.”

She trails off, briefly. “You know, I used to think maybe we were invincible,” she says. “Like nothing could take us down unless we let it. Sometimes I still do. But it doesn’t make any sense, ‘cause if we were, nothing would take us, but…”

“Something always seems to,” says Meldrick.

“I hate this,” says Kay. “I hate knowing I have to bury him, I’ve gotta put him in the _ground_ , Meldrick, and the last thing I said to him was calling him worthless.”

The papers slide from her lap. She doesn’t bother to pick them up, instead leaning down and burying her face in her hands for a moment.

“You tell anyone I sat in here and cried,” she starts.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” says Meldrick.

“They’re watching us, aren’t they?”

“Nah. They got too much paperwork.”

“Figures. Back to normal.” There’s a bitter note in Kay’s voice that Meldrick notices as she goes on. “I hate this. I should be out there trying to find who did this, not going through all this goddamn paperwork.”

“We do what needs to be done,” says Meldrick. It is no comfort and he knows it, but the truth has always been a cold, hard pill to swallow. “For the ones who need us. That’s Beau now. He always said you’re the best of us. He knew he could trust you. That means something, you know?”

Kay bends further to retrieve the scattered papers and doesn’t look at him. “I feel like I let him down,” she says. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Meldrick sighs and holds his arms out, caution to the wind. It’s a relief when she doesn’t just glare at him, but moves from where she sits to lean against his shoulder. Regulations be damned, he thinks, for the moment. There is nothing to be found in leaving the ones you care for to shoulder a burden that should not be theirs to bear.

“You’re probably the only one who never did,” he says. The aquarium is quiet around them, the squad room chaos held at bay. “You take that with you and hold on.”


End file.
